Seattle's new waterfront

It's hard to overstate the effect Alexander Calder's
Eagle has had since landing in Seattle.

The
Eagle, a 39-foot-tall, bright red steel stabile, is one of
21 monumental sculptures gracing the city's sparkling new Olympic
Sculpture Park, which officially opened to the public in January
after eight years and $85 million in the making. But as you
approach the park's nine grassy acres, stretched along the downtown
waterfront, the Calder is the first thing you see. (Is that red
swerve of steel a beak? Are those wings?) Whatever it is, it's
wonderful ― and somehow exuberant, whether you catch it
against a sea of gray clouds or a rare blue Seattle sky.

With the sun making more frequent appearances, temps warming,
and thousands of landscaped native plants budding for their very
first season, now is the perfect time to visit. Especially with the
park's founder, the Seattle Art Museum (SAM), reopening this month
after an $86 million expansion and facelift of its own.

Not your ordinary urban park

Already, locals like me have woven the sculpture park into our
everyday lives. On an early spring afternoon, two women lounge
outside in bright red cafe chairs, sipping lattes, faces turned
toward the sun. Young couples stroll hand in hand or push strollers
along gravel paths. Small dogs on leashes prance about, as
awestruck as their human companions taking in the scene that has
truly transformed their city.

Situated on a former fuel storage and transfer site for the
Union Oil Company, the sculpture park was a generous gift, paid for
mostly by private donations and designed by Weiss/Manfredi
Architects of New York. The tricky topography includes a zigzag
series of open meadows, incorporating valleys, forest groves, train
tracks, a major street, a bike path, and the curving shore of
Elliott Bay. It all connects downtown Seattle to the waterfront,
visually linking the Space Needle to Puget Sound.

There are few more spectacular settings in which to stroll among
major sculptures by some of the top names in 20th-century art.
(Free of charge, no less.) Most sculptures of this quality are in
remote destinations or enclosed within monolithic, windowless
buildings. "We took art outside the museum walls," says Mimi
Gardner Gates, director of SAM.

Outside, indeed. Wandering around the sculpture park, which sits
at the waterfront's north end, you see a 360° panorama of the
Sound, the Olympic Mountains, and, when the weather cooperates,
snow white Mt. Rainier presiding over the surrounding city.

The sculptures are so well placed here, it's a shame to think
that anyone should ever settle for experiencing art like this
indoors.

YOUR PERFECT DAY IN THE PARK

Pick up a map (and a latte) at the sleek steel-and-glass
pavilion; take in the views, and be sure to admire Ellsworth
Kelly's
Curve XXIV on your way out. The rusted-steel fan shape is
mounted on a raw concrete wall just outside the pavilion entrance
and is a masterpiece of understated precision.

Linger in the valley, bushy with waxberry and western
hemlock, at Richard Serra's
Wake sculptures ― five towering, curved-steel forms
undulate in inverted relation to one another. Although the
sculptures are massive and heavy, they're also fluid, suggesting
rusty ships' hulls. Wander through and around them, and you'll find
it hard to resist tapping your knuckles lightly against them (as I
observed one delinquent do, listening for reverberations).

Stop in your tracks where Mark di Suvero's
Bunyon's Chess, an iconoclastic, kinetic work constructed of
logs and thick chain, seems at home overlooking the railroad.

Detour down a bark-strewn path that winds through a grove of
quaking aspen and lush fern, to Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van
Bruggen's zany
Typewriter Eraser, Scale X, a colossal pop-art rendition of
a completely retro office tool, sitting slightly askew on an
embankment.

At the trail's end you'll be walking right alongside the
water. Stop and sit by Seattle artist Roy McMakin's cheeky
Love & Loss installation with its nod to Seattle's
vintage neon, or continue to the small driftwood-strewn beach on
Elliott Bay. Remarkably, there is sand. Big flat boulders to sit
upon. Even small flat stones to skip. A perfect place to ponder
where the boundaries between art and nature lie.

The Olympic Sculpture Park is at the north end of the downtown
waterfront. Pair your visit with a tour of the newly expanded
Seattle Art Museum (SAM), which reopens on May 5. INFO: Free; 2901
Western Ave.;
Seattle Art Museum;
206/654-3100.